Former Real Simple Editor Kristin van Ogtrop on Her Latest Book "Did I Say That Out Loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them"
Show Snapshot:
As editor-in-chief of Real Simple, Kristin van Ogtrop grew the magazine into the #1 women’s lifestyle title with a finger-on-the-pulse insight into the psyche and wants of the American woman.
Now, she is back with x-ray insight into the absurdities of midlife with a hilarious new book, Did I Say That Out Loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them. A memoir on its face, the book plumbs universal themes— the phases, stages, and outrages of midlife.
Listen in as we cover aging parents, aging bodies, growing children, and the ups and downs of career, love, and life.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. How 13 years at the helm of Real Simple gave Kristin insight into the lives of the American woman.
2. Why Kristin hopes readers will finish her book and feel gratitude and optimism.
3. How a perk of midlife is becoming *un-embarrassable.*
4. The 3 stages of parenting. Plus, why your kids will ultimately be great humans.
5. How things fall apart and why we don’t care (aka maintenance is a drag).
6. Why you’re never too old to be parented yourself.
7. Job hunting in midlife.
8. Life is full of hilarious absurdity and painfully sad times. Lost jobs, dying friends, aging parents – we will endure hard things.
9. What can we say? We like what we like. On landlines and fleece-lined pants.
Quotable:
What I really want women to feel when they read the book is this abiding sense of gratitude and optimism. One of the nicest things about middle age is the realization, which on its face seems like a very sad realization, is that your time is really finite. It makes you grateful to be able to wake up every day.
I think that the things that comfort you or make you feel good begin to trump other things. I walk around my house, and we’ve lived in this house for almost 20 years and it hasn’t been painted in over a decade. I walk along and I see the paint is chipped everywhere. I could really be on top of that and figure out a way to either paint it myself or hire someone to paint it, but I don’t. My house in comfortable to me. I have a big comfortable chair where I can watch TV with a dog in my lap and that’s super great. So, it allows me to not think about the chipped paint.
Word of Mouth. Kristin recommends:
I have two things to recommend. One of them is a book by a woman who is a longtime friend of mine named Gabrielle Glaser. And the book is called American Baby and it’s about adoption in the United States. It tells the story of one particular adoption, where a mother and her son were separated. But then it just talks about how basically mostly in the twentieth century in America, what a crooked system the adoption system could be. It’s so well reported, and it reads like a novel and it’s amazing.
And then as I sit here looking out, we’re recording this on a really dreary day that is still too cold for spring. And I think this is maybe not unique to women our age, but it’s certainly a common problem for most of the women I know, particularly in the pandemic when we all were stuck at home, which is we were always cold all the time. I spent most of the pandemic, from like, I don’t know, October to now, wearing lined pants. So, I have these Carhartt fleece-lined pants and they are what we used to call painter’s pants I guess, I don’t even know what they’re called now, that I wore probably three times a week during the entire winter because they were the one thing that kept me warm.
More Resources:
Kristin’s Books:
Did I Say That Out Loud?: Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them
Just Let Me Lie Down: Necessary Terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom
Follow Kristin
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (00:01):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50 who are unafraid to age out loud. I’m your host, Katie Fogarty.
Have you ever cyber-stalked or fangirled someone from afar? I’m going to guess yes because middle school and the internet. We’ve all paid attention to women we think are killing it, right? That’s how we learn all the good stuff. Today’s guest is somebody I’ve fangirled for years. When Kristin van Ogtrop was editor and chief of Real Simple, which she made into the number one American women’s lifestyle magazine, I would devour it each month and look forward to her editor’s notes. I can still remember in 2010 when Kristin shared the debut of her first book about working motherhood. It was titled Just Let Me Lie Down. As the exhausted mother of three kids, ages 10, 7, and 3, I was all, “That is my book title.” But she got there first and she’s done it again. Her newest book is the marvelous, hilarious, Did I Say That Out Loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them. This is a book your partner does not want you to read in bed, because you’ll be shaking with uncontrollable laughter when you’re not nodding in vigorous agreement. Welcome, Kristin.
Kristin Van Ogtrop (01:11):
Thank you, Katie, it’s really nice to be here with you and that intro was so generous and amazing and I think I might have to transcribe it and put it under my pillow.
Katie (01:22):
We’ll print it. [laughs]
Kristin (01:23):
And read it again every single night before I fall asleep. [laughs]
Katie (01:26):
I’ll print it out and send you a framed copy. I’m serious, I’m so, so excited. I vividly remember that first title and have just loved you ever since.
My first question, as we get going, is how did you get inside my brain? I read this current book, I was like, wait a minute, Kristin needs to be on my show. I felt a thousand points of connection. You talk about reinventing in midlife and how you feel young when your body feels old, the struggling to use to remote. I was like, this is my life. I felt very seen.
Kristin (02:02):
I have a very fraught relationship with my remote, which could be a whole book. How did I get inside your head? Well, I could make a joke about like, secret robots that we send [laughs] by drone to your house and night but it’s actually a little more prosaic than that. When I was the editor of Real Simple, which you mentioned, and I wrote that monthly editor’s letter, one of the most satisfying things about that job, which I had for a long time, 13 years which is longer than I’ve done anything basically except be a mother and be married and live in the house I live in now, women would write in and say, “I feel like you could be my friend. I know exactly what you’re talking about. You’re describing my life.” I think it helped me be good at that job, but it also kind of underscored for me, this universal truth that I think, particularly when you’re talking about people who were your age and who more or less live in similar circumstances, without going into too much detail about that, people are more similar than they are different.
Obviously, in that job, I mean, we were catering to an American audience, of women who didn’t have to worry that they were going to be taken hostage in the middle of the night, you know what I mean? It was an audience of relative privilege compared to a lot of people on this planet. And so, living in that space, we all have so many things in common. And you and I are at a very similar life stage. I mean, your kids are younger than mine, mostly, but you know, I feel like it’s comforting to know that many of the things that you go through, particularly the things that feel hard, are shared by a lot of people around you. It makes you feel better.
Katie (04:16):
Absolutely. Some of my favorite notes to receive from people who listen to the show are people saying things like “I feel seen.” I got a Facebook message from someone who said, “You are speaking my language, I feel like you’re inside my brain.” It does feel wonderful that you connect with people. Everything in your books just spoke to me so much. Why did you decide to write about midlife?
Kristin (04:42):
Oh.
Katie (04:44):
[laughs] Just a big, easy question, right?
Kristin (04:48):
[laughs] Well, I mean the easiest answer is because that’s the part of life I’m living right now. An answer that became clearer over time I guess, particularly as I was finishing the book and now we’re getting ready to publish the book, is what I really want women, and the readers of my book will probably mostly be women, to feel when they read the book is this abiding sense of gratitude and optimism. I mean there’s a lot of like, bitching about middle age, and I’m at the front of the line there, certainly n certain chapters of this book. But to me one of the nicest things about middle age is the realization which on its face seems like a very sad realization, that your time is really finite, but I feel like it makes you grateful. It makes you grateful to be able to wake up every day. So, even though there’s stupid crap about middle age that is annoying, you’re also just happy that your life is mostly good on most days, you know? And mostly good, the bar gets lower. [both laugh]
Katie (06:09):
So much lower, so much lower.
Kristin (06:10):
That’s the good thing too.
Katie (06:13):
For me, a great night’s sleep, that’s what I crave these days. It’s that funny meme that goes around. All the things that were punishments when you were young, going to bed early and staying home on a Saturday night, are things that you’re so excited about now. So, we do have a bit of a lower bar.
I think your title does a very fun nod to that; Did I Say That Out Loud? Because saying things out loud is not always easy, but I feel like as we get older it’s really necessary. That gets the connection, that sort of sense of community that you talk about.
Kristin (06:48):
But also, I think that I mean I don’t know if this is true for you. There’s a chapter in my book about aging parents and I write about this quality that my father has, where he is so completely himself, as a human being, and unembarassable [both laugh]. He’ll do these things, and he’s a really good guy, he’s not an ogre, terrible man, he’s a very nice person and a good person. But he’ll do these sometimes really annoying things and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He’s just completely unself-conscious. He’s so conscious of who he is that he’s unself-conscious, it’s like flipped or something.
Katie (07:38):
Has he always been like that or is it something that he evolved into? Because I feel like I can still be embarrassed and I’m 51. I want to work my way up to being unembarrassable. When did that happen?
Kristin (07:49):
Well, I don’t know. I’ll be 57 next month. So, maybe between the ages of 51 and 57 it happens, because it definitely happened for my father over time, and I think it has happened for me. I’ll say things sometimes now in a work meeting, and later I’ll think, oh god that was just really a stupid thing to say. And not an offensive thing to say, but something where I sound kind of judgey or really aggressive or something, and I’ll think, “Who cares?” [both laugh] And like, 10 years ago I probably would have thought, “Kristin, you should care, you should care.” So, I think that sort of speaks to the title, you say things that are in your head, and I think that the older you get, the more that those things that are in your head come out and it’s okay.
Katie (08:41):
I love that. I feel like I have definitely gotten better. I’m very much capable of being embarrassed but I’m also much better at forgiving myself. So, while I might be embarrassed, I’m not going to beat myself up.
Kristin (08:52):
Yeah, well that’s good.
Katie (08:54):
I’m kind of life, I’m working up there. I’m able to forgive myself very quickly and move on, in ways that I definitely could not do when I was younger. I would be up torturing myself about decisions or what I said or what I did or didn’t do. That’s over, that ship has really sailed, so I do love that.
Kristin (09:13):
Well, and I think, just to clarify it’s not that I’m not capable of feeling embarrassed. I’ll tell you when I still feel embarrassed. If I’ve done something that seems unkind, but in the moment, I don’t realize it’s unkind, but later I think, “That wasn’t a very kind way to react to whatever that person was saying.” Or you see someone in pain, and you think you could have done better to help them feel better. So, I still feel embarrassed in those situations when I think I seem unkind. But other than that, if I do something stupid and I look foolish, I’m not embarrassed anymore.
Katie (09:53):
Right. Well, that’s a wonderful distinction. When you kind of choose to be kind. It’s hard. We’re living in a deeply unkind moment of time it feels like. You know, I get that, I totally get that.
I absolutely loved chapter 11 of your book. Anyone who is listening to this right now needs to go out and order this book immediately, if only for chapter 11, which is “Things Fall Apart” because it is screamingly, laugh out loud, funny. I’m not kidding. My husband was grumpy because I was laughing so hard reading this. I think anyone north of 40 can relate to this. What do you cover in this chapter for people who haven’t read it yet? And why did you choose to write about some of these things?
Kristin (10:41):
Okay, so for people who have not already rushed out and bought my book.
Katie (10:46):
[laughs] And what are you waiting for? Get going!
Kristin (10:50):
[laughs] Chapter 11, “Things Fall Apart,” is about things breaking down both in your physical self and in the world around you. And it starts out with the story of when the heels of one of my feet hit the big toe of my other foot, and my toenail broke off. And I was like, “For God’s sake, everything is breaking.” I cover root canals and colonoscopies and just the things that these sort of unpleasant turns that your body takes. But I try to do it in sort of a funny way, I guess. Because what are you gonna do Katie?
Katie (11:38):
Nothing, nothing.
Kristin (11:39):
Nothing, right. You have to laugh at it because otherwise what are you gonna do? It’s only gonna get worse. I keep telling my husband, this is only going to get worse. But it’s also just about how, like my husband and I are super lazy about maintenance, whether it’s like our cars…
Katie (11:57):
I so related to this, I was like, nodding, nodding, nodding. I’m like, do not like to maintain, do not like to maintain [laughs]. It’s so relatable, it’s so relatable.
Kristin (12:09):
I think, again, going to the bar being low. You get to the point, whether it’s like changing the oil in your car, or really paying attention to why your tooth hurts and you need to go to the endodontist. The tipping point becomes may be further along the scale, which is totally mixing metaphors I guess, as you get older. I used to be so on top of and a lot more organized about things like that. Now I’ve gotten older, I think it doesn’t really matter as much. If the tooth pain gets so bad that I can’t bear it, then I’ll go to the endodontist. My car’s not going to run out of oil, so maybe I don’t get the oil change as quickly as I need to, the car is still gonna run. It’s so cavalier. I guess if you’re coming from a place of relative privilege, going back to what I was saying at the beginning, you can be cavalier, right? So, it just sounds bratty probably to even admit that out loud.
Katie (13:16):
No, I think you’re saying cavalier, but what I hear is clarity. You just get clearer on the things that you care about. That’s the way I feel. You’re clearer on what you need to prioritize and what you don’t. In fact, in your last chapter, you kind of go through some of these lessons, things that really matter, lessons you’ve learned, things that don’t go the way you thought they were going to go. It’s just a wonderful sort of snapshot of things that we should be focusing on. I do think that midlife produces clarity in some ways that we don’t have when we’re younger. What’s your take on that?
Kristin (13:54):
Yes, a hundred percent. I one hundred percent agree with you. I think too that going back to you saying how important a good night’s sleep is, I think that the things that comfort you or make you feel good begin to trump other things. Like, I walk around my house and we’ve lived in this house for almost 20 years and it hasn’t been painted in over a decade. I walk along and I see the paint is chipped everywhere and the woodwork and stuff. I could really be on top of that and figure out a way to either paint it myself or hire someone to paint it, but I don’t. I kind of stopped noticing it and my house in comfortable to me and I have a big comfortable chair where I can watch TV with a dog in my lap and that’s super great. [laughs] So, it allows me to not think about the chipped paint, I guess. Or it’s just laziness, it’s increased laziness, which is also a definite possibility.
Katie (14:54):
You know, I think that there’s something to be said about being lazy. That’s a problem for your future homeowner. You’re focused on the things that matter like snuggling up with your dog. I totally get that, and I love it.
I want to take a very quick break, and when we return, I want to hear, Kristin, about what were some of the tougher chapters to write. What was the hardest thing that you had to say out loud?
[Ad break]
Katie (16:40):
So, Kristin, what was the hardest thing to write about, the hardest thing to say out loud in this book?
Kristin (16:45):
Well, the hardest chapter to write was the one about my friend dying. Which even, you know, I have a friend who died after a long battle with cancer, now, gosh, a year and a half ago. He was the husband of a dear friend and someone who my husband and I spent a lot of time with over the years. So, you know, going back to what I was saying about how you reach this age and you think that your time is finite, part of what makes you see that is that you lose friends that are your age. So, that chapter was very hard. Still, I get very sad when I read it and when I was reading my audiobook, I kept crying, I had to keep stopping. [laughs] The audiobook guys were probably like, “What the hell lady?” So, that one was hard because it makes me really sad.
The other chapter that was hard to write, again because it is sad to me, was about the end of 2016. We’re a huge dog family, we have two dogs, we always have two dogs. We had a dog who was at that time a little over a year old and he drowned in the Adirondacks and it took a long time for us to understand what had happened to the dog. We didn’t see him go under the ice; it was during the winter. So, that was a long journey with my family. It was kind of the first thing for my kids, where they had experienced— I mean Katie we’ve talked about this, how lucky it is to be this age and have parents who are alive, which I write about in the book too. My kids, their grandparents are all still alive and this was the first time we had, for my kids, a loss within the family. And in my mind, it was very sad. Part of me was like, oh it’s a dog. But to my kids, it wasn’t just a dog, and so that was hard to write about because there are so many layers to that story. Because it was about this sad early loss of this puppy, but also how you parent through something like that and re-examine how you define what a tragedy is, compared to how your kid defines what a tragedy is. I write about this in the book, I kept calling it a small tragedy when the dog drowned. My oldest son got so mad at me eventually and said, “Stop calling it a small tragedy,” because to him it didn’t feel like a small tragedy. Sorry, that’s a long answer, but I would say those chapters were the hardest.
Katie (19:45):
It’s so hard to sort of explore pain like that and to excavate it. That, I think, is something that when you get to this age, that informs the gratitude, as you said. Why we’re grateful for our lives. Because we see that there is loss and that we’ve all sort of navigated it.
I do love the way you write about your children in this book. They so vividly come to life. Everything from navigating teen pot smoking and when to let them drink in the house and just the thing about Fortnite and becoming this expert Fortnite player. I was dying because I’ve had all of these conversations with my own children, in my own life.
I’m just curious because you talk about the three stages of parenting in one of your chapters and it's absolutely genius. I would love it if you could just quickly share those stages of parenting with the audience. But I also want to know, do your kids read your books? Are they into them? My kids don’t listen to my podcast, I’m just curious if you’ve been able to work it out.
Kristin (20:52):
I’m not sure my kids even know what I do for a job, frankly. Which I think is healthy, I think. I think. Anyway, so the chapter about children is called “Your Children, The Disappointment.” [Katie laughs] It describes the three phases of parenting which are: phase one, your children are going to be everything you ever dreamed they would be, super amazing creatures. This sort of platonic ideal of this thing you’ve given birth to. That’s phase one. Phase two is when your children disappoint you. So, it turns out they’re actually not, they’re actually…
Katie (21:43):
Not geniuses. [laughs]
Kristin (21:44):
Not geniuses. They’re actually normal, probably pretty well-adjusted people, but they’re just like, kinda average. So, that’s super disappointing, because of course you thought you were giving birth to this spectacular creature and your kid is average. And then the third phase of parenting is your children make you disappointed in yourself. And that is when you realize how many ways, they are just better people than you are. So anyway, those are the three phases of parenting, at least in my experience.
My oldest son is 25 and my youngest is 14, I have all boys. And as to your question about whether they read, you know, they’re supportive, but they have very limited interest in what mom does. And that includes when mom writes about them. So, there were times when the publisher, as I think is probably always the case, had a lawyer vet the book for me and there were times when, well for them, I guess. [laughs]
Katie (22:58):
They’ve lawyered up, they’re like wait a minute, let’s see this. [laughs]
Kristin (23:03):
I mean, you’ve read it, Katie. It’s not like I’m writing about things, I’m not Woody Allen, I’m not going to write about these really crazy things and get sued or whatever. Anyway, so the lawyer, we’re going through the manuscript and we get to the section about children and she’s like, “So, you say this about your son Axel,” who is now 14, “and I wonder if you want to soften that a little bit.” [laughs]
Katie (23:32):
That is so funny.
Kristin (23:35):
And I was just like, I have a really good relationship with my kids so, I don’t think they’re gonna like sue me for anything or send me a cease and desist letter for anything, or whatever it is that happens. But I’m not sure that any of my kids, including my two older boys, have read any part of this book, including the chapter about them. When we were getting further along and I was in the copy-editing stage and stuff, I’d say to them, “Okay guys, you’re running out of time here. You either read it and you tell me what your objections are now, or you’re done.”
Katie (24:08):
We’re printing it, we’re printing it.
Kristin (24:09):
We’re printing it. But my husband, I will say, my husband who has a much more finely calibrated sensitivity meter than his boorish wife, [Katie laughs] and he’s really, really, as he should be, as we both are, but in different ways I guess, protective of our children. He’s also just much more sensitive. He’s better at it than I am. So, he read it and there were a couple of places where he said, “I’m not sure you should put that in, why don’t you just change that a little bit.” I feel like he was the safety net for the kids.
Katie (24:49):
Nice, I love it.
Kristin (24:51):
So, anyway.
Katie (24:52):
It’s so wonderful that he kind of weighed in and gave you the little nudge, took out the pink eraser, did a little line editing for you. But no, it’s so beautiful. And the phase of parenting, when you talk about how you become disappointed in yourself because your kids are such kind and wonderful and fully evolved humans, I feel squarely in that parenting space. I feel like the pandemic has at different times revealed things about me, where I’m like, I am not being the person that I want to be during this parenting experience. And my kids have far outpaced me in terms of their flexibility, their patience, and their wonderful role with it, and just their humanity. I dunno, so, I really related to what you shared and the phases of parenting. To anyone who is listening to this episode who is a parent, you’ll adore this chapter as well. It’s full of just fantastic insights.
Kristin (25:52):
Oh, well thank you. I also think too, that when your kids get to be say, in their twenties, as my two older ones are, they understand enough about human nature that they really, they understand all your tricks. They know, like when I’m behaving badly because no one puts their dishes in the dishwasher or whatever and I have probably an outsized reaction to that, my kids will know, oh it’s because mom is having a bad day for this other reason. It’s not about the dishes, it’s about something else. And so, they call you on your bullshit behavior sometimes, and they’re right. So, that’s both sort of gratifying because they have great emotional intelligence and infuriating. [both laugh]
Katie (26:47):
Exactly, you’re like, wait a minute. Right when the new year rolled around, I wrote each of my kids just a one-page letter. I was sort of inspired by one of my guests, Nancy Davis Kho who wrote a book called The Thank You Project and she celebrated turning 50 by writing 50 thank you letters to the people in her life. I actually wrote them to my kids and to my husband and left them on their pillow. I just wanted to thank them for how they helped me get through this shitty pandemic year. And to my son Milo[1] , my middle guy, I just said, thank you for your core kindness when I was being deeply unkind, different points when I was shrieking at the top of my lungs about something or having a fight. He’s always just a steady rock. You know, parenting is never done and sometimes you feel like, “Am I doing it right?” But as you said at one point, everyone turns out well and they develop into amazing people and they also develop into the age where they’re responsible for themselves. It sounds like you’re kind of at that phase with two of your three kids, that they’re fully adults.
But you do write very beautifully in the first chapter of your book about having a health scare, which is just a hilarious health scare, and everyone needs to read the book. We’re not even gonna tell, no spoilers here. You must read this book to figure out what in God’s name happened to Kristin in the first chapter of this book because it is just one of those freak stories that you’re gonna hear nowhere else. But you wake up at one point and your parents are by your bedside and you’re thinking, “I’m 54,” or however old you were, and you think, “parenting never ends, my parents are still worried next to me.” Have you seen that as you’ve gotten older, that that dynamic changes at all, in any way?
Kristin (28:38):
That they’re always there?
Katie (28:39):
Or just that your relationship with them has changed.
Kristin (28:42):
No. No, and in fact, if I were to name a third chapter that was hard to write, it would be the one about aging parents because my parents are so important to me, still. I’m so grateful to them that it’s hard to put that into words. It’s hard to capture how I really feel about my parents.
I was thinking about this the other day. My parents and I hope Katie, that I can give this to my children, and I hope that you can give this to your children, and I hope this for all parents. My parents just moved into a retirement home kind of place, whatever that’s called. They have an apartment in this complex. I’ve only spent one night there because they just moved a couple of months ago. But just being in that apartment and thinking about being in that apartment, which I hardly know at all now, because it’s brand new, makes me feel so calm. And it’s because there’s something, for me, about sleeping under my parents’ roof, that makes me feel like everything is okay, and I’m 56 years old. I feel taken care of. Even at, I’ll be 57 as I mentioned, in a couple of weeks. At the age of 57, I still feel well taken care of by my parents.
Katie (30:13):
I love that. I mean, I remember when I had my daughter, who is now 20, and I had a really terrible delivery, I ended up have pre-eclampsia. They were rolling me into the operating room out of the delivery room. And they said, only one person can come. My husband and my mother were in the room. And Mike leaned over and was like, “I’m coming with you.” Because he knew if I’d had my choice, I would have picked my mother. [both laugh] She was one hundred percent making me feel better. She was the one that would be in the bathroom when you were getting sick, rubbing your back when you were a little kid, so much of that sense of care and support comes from your mom. Of course, it makes sense that you sleep well. You’re back under the care of people that love you.
Kristin (31:01):
Does that go away? That’s what I wonder. When your parents are no longer around, does that feeling remain? Or does something else replace that feeling and if so, what is it? I don’t want to know, but eventually, I will know, we’ll all know.
Katie (31:19):
We’ll all know. And I don’t know that yet. My parents are both alive, my husband’s parents are both alive. So, that’s the Rubicon we’ll cross at some point, which I’m not looking forward to.
Kristin (31:30):
No, it’s awful.
Katie (31:31):
Our time is a little bit running out, but I do not want to let you go without following up on something that you share in one of your chapters. In one of your chapters, you start off by saying that there’s something both liberating and terrifying about being unemployed in middle age. I would just love to hear a little bit more about how you left Real Simple and started a new chapter. One of my earlier guests in March was somebody who lost a job and had a very challenging time during the pandemic finding a new one. My day job is as a career coach, so I work with a lot of clients who are unemployed and looking. So much of our sense of worth is linked to the work we do. I would love to hear a little bit about how you navigated that chapter because Real Simple is in your past. Can you walk us through that?
Kristin (32:21):
Sure. So, it was a great job. Great, great, great job. Really fun, I was there at a great time. I feel enormously lucky to have had a job where the skills required for the job and the skills I possess were so aligned. It was just great, it was great, great, great.
But the last couple of years were not so great. The magazine industry was declining because people were reading things on their computers and on their phones, so ad revenue was going way down. So, there wasn’t the kind of growth. I’m pretty easily bored, and I’d been in the job a long time, for me at least. And the job wasn’t changing enough because there was no money to invest to try new things, and I was firing people a lot by the end. And it just got very, it just started to feel very heavy and I was angry and unhappy. So, I quit in September 2016.
I said I don’t want to do anything. I’d never taken a break; I’d always worked from the time I graduated from college. I’d never been a stay-at-home mom, so all I wanted to do was take a pottery class, which I did. I took three semesters of this pottery class, turns out I really suck at pottery. [Katie laughs] You know, my youngest son Axel was in fourth grade when I left my job. So, I walked him down to school every day and I picked him up after school every day and I made a lot of really interesting recipes I’d never tried before and got super acquainted with my dogs, and you know, had an unstructured kind of life that I always thought was out of my reach. And it was liberating. At first, it was liberating not to have my life governed by meeting and the Metro-North train schedule. I was really, really, really fortunate, to be able to have that time.
But after a while, I felt like I was really losing my sense of self. I think I’m just a person who really likes having a job. And so, the last chapter in the book is about those two years and sort of the steps I took trying different things, trying on different hats basically to see if they fit, and realizing at a certain point that I really missed going to an office and being part of a collaborative enterprise. So, then I started working again as a literary agent, where my skills that I possessed as a magazine editor are very, I mean I was going to say complimentary, but they’re sort of the same. Magazine editors are professionals’ dilettantes [Katie laughs] and a lot of literary agents are also professional dilettantes but in a good way.
Katie (35:44):
Is that on your business card? [laughs] Professional dilettante.
Kristin (35:47):
[laughs] It should be, it’s kind of a fun title, right? Professional dilettante. And I was really happy to go back to work.
Katie (35:59):
So, what kind of books are you publishing now? What kind of books are you publishing with your, tell us about that?
Kristin (36:05):
Oh gosh, so far, it’s all nonfiction. The books I’ve sold for clients so far range, everything from a cookbook that’s coming out later this year to a narrative nonfiction examination of the relationship between African Americans and Native Americans around the time of the civil war. So, it really runs the gamut, the types of projects I work on. So, that’s part of what’s really fun about it. I feel like that’s kind of an unsatisfying— [phone rings] Oh, can you hear my phone?
Katie (36:46):
I can and that’s all right. This is, you know, audio.
Kristin (36:51):
Okay, that. Actually, Katie, that is such a good little…what am I trying to think about? It’s good that this happened in your podcast because I’m a middle-aged person who has a landline. And what you’re hearing behind me is my landline ringing. [both laugh] I’m one of like seven people in the United States of America who still has a landline.
Katie (37:15):
I’m one of the seven too. Oh my God, Dave is raising his hand. Look at this, there’s three, Dave our audio engineer, the three of us have landlines.
Kristin (37:25):
We’re dinosaurs.
Katie (37:25):
We are dinosaurs. I have a cordless phone in my kitchen. Not cordless, I have a phone with a cord. A phone with a cord, a corded phone in my kitchen. The house that we bought is 100 years old and it’s got this insane thing. And my kids have never once tried to pick it up, I don’t think they even know what it is. They have no idea that that thing is a phone, it’s so wild, oh my gosh. [Kristin laughs] You know what, I’m happy to be in dinosaur territory. It’s all good.
Kristin (37:53):
Listen, when cell service goes out and your landline still works, who gets the last laugh?
Katie (37:58):
Exactly. Me, the dinosaur. Maybe they’re not the right metaphor because we know how it went for them but we’re gonna hang around. We’re more of like, I dunno, I’m trying to think. Who is the thing that’s always being reborn, out of the fire? What is that?
Kristin (38:20):
The phoenix?
Katie (38:21):
Yes! We’re the phoenix. [laughs]
Kristin (38:23):
We’re phoenixes.
Katie (38:25):
All right, team phoenix.
Kristin (38:26):
Which feels like it should have a plural. Phoenixes is such an awkward word, there must be a different plural word for the word phoenix. Because I’m a professional dilettante I don’t know what that word is.
Katie (38:39):
Well, I’m gonna google it and put it into the show notes. We’re going to figure this out. The other thing we’re going to figure out is what’s a group of phoenixes. You know how there’s like a murder of crows, or there’s a herd of elephants, I don’t know. All those weird words. Kristin this has been so much fun.
Kristin (38:54):
You, David, and I are a flock of phoenixes.
Katie (38:58):
We’re a flock of phoenixes, all right. I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. Kristin, before I let you go, I’m wondering if there’s anything you want to share with our listeners. People have such great recommendations and you’re a literary agent. Is there anything that you can recommend to our listeners?
Kristin (39:15):
Oh gosh. Well, okay.
Katie (39:16):
I’m putting you on the spot.
Kristin (39:17):
I’m not going to recommend one of my client’s books because…
Katie (39:20):
You can’t play favorites, it’s like picking your favorite child.
Kristin (39:23):
But I’m going to recommend, I have two things to recommend. One of them is a book by a woman who is a longtime friend of mine named Gabrielle Glaser. And the book is called American Baby and it’s about adoption in the United States. It tells the story of one particular adoption, where a mother and her son were separated. But then it just talks about how basically mostly in the twentieth century in America, what a crooked system the adoption system could be. So anyway, it’s nonfiction but it’s so well reported, and it reads like a novel and it’s amazing and I just finished it. So, American Baby by Gabrielle Glaser.
And then as I sit here looking out, we’re recording this on a really dreary day that is still too cold for spring. And I think this is maybe not unique to women our age, but it’s certainly a common problem for most of the women I know, particularly in the pandemic when we all were stuck at home, which is we were always cold all the time. I spent most of the pandemic, from like, I don’t know, October to now, wearing lined pants. So, I have these Carhartt fleece-lined pants and they are what we used to call painter’s pants I guess, I don’t even know what they’re called now, that I wore probably three times a week during the entire winter because they were the one thing that kept me warm. So, I would recommend too, Carhartt fleece-lined pants. [laugh]
Katie (41:01):
You had me at fleece-lined. I’m in an old house too, I know the pandemic chill. I love that, I’m gonna check that out.
Kristin (41:09):
Wait, I will say, can I add one quick thing?
Katie (41:11):
Of course!
Kristin (41:12):
So, L.L. Bean also has flannel-lined pants.
Katie (41:17):
Ooo.
Kristin (41:18):
But since I’m quite an expert now in this area, unfortunately, in my experience, fleece-lined pants are a lot warmer.
Katie (41:24):
Okay. Fleece.
Kristin (41:26):
Just a word to the wise.
Katie (41:27):
All right, I’m staying away from that flannel. L.L. Bean also brings me back to maybe being in eighth grade and I don’t want to relive those days [both laugh]. Carhartt sounds a little but more rugged and more fun, so I will put those in the show notes. Kristin, how can our listeners keep following you in your writing and your book?
Kristin (41:47):
Well, you can buy my book wherever books are sold. I’m always encouraging people to go to their local independent bookstores these days because they’ve taken such a hit in the pandemic. But the book is on Amazon too. On social you can follow me on Instagram, which is @kvanogtrop, or on Twitter at @kvanogtrop. And my website is kristinvanogtrop.com.
Katie (42:09):
Kristin, thank you so much for being with me today.
Kristin (42:11):
Oh my gosh, Katie, this was so much fun. Thank you for liking my book and I love your podcast and it was a real pleasure to be here.
Katie (42:17):
Thank you.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50 who are aging without apology. All April long we are taking inspiration from Kristin’s book and talking out loud about topics that don’t get enough airtime. We’ll cover bladder health and why you’re afraid to sneeze, midlife hair and going grey, and a host of other only in midlife moments.
If you enjoy the show, please head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to review the show. Reviews help us grow. So, if you take a minute to write a quick one, I have some fun A Certain Age swag I want to send you. Write a review, let me know, and I’ll mail you two A Certain Age laptop stickers with our tagline: Age Boldly Beauties, and Age Out Loud. Yes, you heard that correctly, you’ll get actual mail. The old-fashioned kind, how fun is that? See you next time and until then: age boldly beauties.